[aprssig] Alinco or ???

[M. Schneider]

Scott, per your request for feedback from Alinco DR-135TP users, I and 
another local ham use the 135TP for mobile tracker purposes.  This is 
fulltime, standalone tracker on 144.390 usage.  Aside from the occasional 
bout of "stupidity"  (they (the TNC) seem prone to reset if the voltage 
drops low, such as cranking with a low battery), and the lack of "smart 
beaconing" both of us have been happy overall.  But the lack of smart 
beaconing has prompted me to pull mine and replace it with a conventional 2m 
rig and TinyTrak.  But I like the ability to plug a laptop into the radio 
for use with a program such as UiView.

I'm still anxiously awaiting your replacement board, hope you overcome the 
production problems.  Maybe those of us with the EJ-41U could send you our 
boards and you could transplant the connector to your replacement?  A 
thought.  I believe you have previously said that your replacement will 
support smart beaconing, correct?

Mark - K5MAR


> Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 17:47:02 -0800
> From: <scott at opentrac.org>
> Subject: RE: [aprssig] Alinco or ???
> To: "'TAPR APRS Mailing List'" <aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
> Message-ID: <mailman.1.1131645601.22133.aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>> I'd love to see a TNC that supports KISS as a replacement
>> part for the TNC that's in the DR-135.  In the meantime
>> though I can't complain in the least, it's provided reliable service.
>
> I'm still working on my board.  It decoded its first packet off the air
> today.  It's not quite decoding ALL of the packets yet (or even a 
> majority)
> but I'm still tweaking the code and haven't done any hardware tuning yet.
>
> This particular board is intended as a 2-way tracker (one with waypoint
> transfer capability), but it ought to serve adequately as a 1200 baud KISS
> TNC, at least for APRS.  It's only got 2k of RAM, so I wouldn't want to 
> try
> to run TCP/IP over it.
>
> As I've mentioned before, there are still production hurdles to overcome -
> in particular, dealing with the oddball pin header needed to connect to 
> the
> DR-135T's main board.
>
> To those using the on-board TNC as a tracker - how are you using it?  Are
> you on 144.39 full time, using it through a voice repeater, or something
> else?
>
> Scott
> N1VG